Uncovering History

Laura Varlas

Culturally responsive approaches to teaching history give students multiple perspectives on the past, with room for connections to the personal and present day.

"Meet the women you don't know, behind the mission you do," proclaims the poster for the hit film Hidden Figures. From tagline to title, it's clear that this story, about the black women who led NASA's team of mathematicians during the "Space Race," was previously cast in the shadows of American history. Shining a light on these hidden histories, and broadening the spectrum of inquiry into the past, is not just a winning formula at the box office. It's also an endeavor that's resonating in K–12 classrooms, with teachers seeking ways to provide more accurate, complex, and engaging history education.

Mirror and Magnify

Instructional specialist Aruna Arjunan has spent the last three years working with New York City public school teachers to develop a U.S. history curriculum using open educational resources, which supports teaching content and literacy skills simultaneously. Now, Arjunan and her colleagues at New Visions for Public Schools are launching a curriculum project called "Rewriting History: Expanding the Story of the United States." Their goal is to make U.S. history more relevant to their "extraordinarily diverse" student population by finding the overlapping core in a Venn diagram of high-interest untold histories, contemporary connections, and the content commonly tested on the New York Regents Exams. Arjunan thinks this new grounding will help students better understand their world and "be more interested in a curriculum they can see themselves in."